I have done similar things when interviewing people. It normally makes the person being interviewed a bit uncomfortable being faced with something they have no idea about.
With this question I would have liked to be told that there is a pattern at the beginning, and the terminator is always the same. The range of bytes is also good.
Other bits to look for would be a length indicator, or an incrementing number, or any other pattern. Just hearing what the candidate thought was very useful.
Life is full of problems like this and nobody to tell you the answer. Don't be put off.
I once spent a long time trying to decode a data base entry. It had normal binary numbers, but also a field of 'rubbish' that I could not tie up with the decoded number. Eventually I discovered it was using a different counting system with letters 0-9, A-Z and a few more symbols. Without the symbols with be base 36, so I thought it must be base 40. I was wrong, but soon saw it was base 42. I had great joy telling colleagues that the answer was 42 - but those in America lost the joke.
I was wrong, but soon saw it was base 42. I had great joy telling colleagues that the answer was 42 - but those in America lost the joke.
I doubt that this happened because they were in America or from America.
Google has it as the result for searching
the answer to the ultimate question of life the universe and everything
The tricky part being obviously knowing the actual question. wink
But besides the knowledge of English literature, with all due respect ) , you seem like someone capable of using Base 13 in job interviews 😯
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I understand that one might be able to evaluate a candidate's spirit of observation and the like, but it still sounds to me as a "dirty trick", I mean, AFTER the job interview was ended, the examiner could have spent a couple of minutes explaining to gilly_uk what was actually expected by the question and tell him how the chances that he would have answered it fully were next to none.
jaclaz
How did I know that it was XOR? I didn't. I guessed, jaclaz was kind enough to do the grunt work and get the details and prove me right(ish).
I've been a forensic examiner for long enough, and done far more of my fair share of reverse engineering to develop a bit of intuition around file formats and obfuscation. Plus in an interview type question they're hardly going to hand you AES encrypted data, it was always going to be either XOR or caesar cypher variant.
For the record the fact that every line ends with a 0 should be very familiar to anyone who has programmed with C and its relatives, thats how strings work.
For the record the fact that every line ends with a 0 should be very familiar to anyone who has programmed with C and its relatives, thats how strings work.
Well, for the record, you must also provide an example of *anything* written in C that contains (I mean console commands including the "c\>" prompt )
c\>dir windows
c\>ipconfig
c\>cd windows
c\>type boot.ini
AND has 1st and last line terminated with 00 and second and third with 0000 (and no it doesn't look like 00 padding, as each "line" has a different length).
On the other hand, if it is a set of commands, anyone ever actually manage to get
"C\>type boot.ini"
AFTER having changed directory to C\Windows? roll
And in any case the "C" would be capital in all NT command interpreters.
jaclaz